


The Butterfly Effect

by lostamongstars



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5371796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostamongstars/pseuds/lostamongstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Crossposted on my tumblr (catnoirism), FF.Net and Wattpad (lostamongstars)</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Butterfly Effect

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted on my tumblr (catnoirism), FF.Net and Wattpad (lostamongstars)

Twenty days ago, he was normal. 

Twenty days after, he had his whole will driven to commit acts like biting bullets or juggling meat cleavers with his bare hands, whichever was doable at the moment.

* * *

 

Twenty days ago, he had no headaches lasting for no more than three minutes, and which had always come around 23:23. Three minutes of his eyes crossed, vision blurred like he was seeing reality distort in itself, vision brimming with white and red and blue stars, every inch of his skin breaking into the coldest of sweat. The way he grasped for every single breath that seemed like the next might be his last, wincing and cries muted for fear of being discovered writhing on his bed, in fetal position, smack in the middle of a supposedly normal Parisian night. He had enough problems already from his rising and falling marks—he couldn't bear troubling his mother with something as simple as headaches, too.

Only that painkillers had no effect on his headache. He had tried that route already, see. Taken various brands of it too, all done in secret, under the faint guiding light of the moon through the window on the hall and kitchen when it started two weeks ago. Nothing worked. Stuffing his head between pillows didn't. Listening to music didn't—everything he did seem to worsen the headaches, if anything. Overdosing himself with drugs that are supposed to help wouldn't do him any good, either. He would most likely die, the lesser evil being stuck in a coma or on a hospital bed for weeks with a prognosis of a considerable damage on any of his organs. No, he couldn't have any of that.

Nathanael could only wait for the worst to past. And that meant bracing himself for the final leg of his headache, the one he couldn't shake off, the one he never seemed to have prepared himself although tomorrow, he'll be celebrating in agony the third week in which this all started.

The final leg. The visions. The butterfly-infested room. No words could express how much he hated seeing butterflies now. The retracting window with a semblance to a camera opening its shutters before capturing its object of interest.

And the man with the cane. Masked. Those lips that could throw Chloe's pink ones into eternal shame. Gray and violet clothes, washed in the strangest glow of blue and pink. The butterflies swarmed around him like children around Santa Claus, begging his attention.

The man's free hand held out to him. Those bright blue eyes that seemed good but beneath coiled something darker, sinister.

Nathanael was suddenly right in front of him. He always  _was_. He  _never_  got used to it.

Then, one of the butterflies landed on the palm of his free hand. The man encloses the butterfly with his other. Beads of darkness gathered inward, into the butterfly, and the butterfly arose and flew straight into Nathanael's heart.

The cold hit him square, right down to his bone, petrifying him.

He took rigid steps back, clutching his heart and hoping he could ease the chill spreading further beneath. He'd seen this play out for twenty days, he'd felt this out-of-body coldness that messed with him for twenty times, and he had never ever changed what he did—like this was all he was  _designed_  to do in the vision.

Then something different happened. The vision didn't end here. The man was now smiling at him.

"Everything goes downhill tonight," he spoke in that rich, flowing, French accent. "And you, my child, will be a part of it."

Beads of darkness gathered around him, too, like he was one of that man's butterflies.

And he was, indeed, one of his wards. The stylus was his weapon, the weapon driven by scorn and unrequited love.

Nathanael remembered that day for the twentieth time. The nightmare he couldn't believe he committed in a fit of revenge, punctuated by strings of flashbacks that concerned not only him but the  _other_  children in chaotic shades of black and vivid red—their screams echoing in his head, his own scream threatening to break through his skull and shatter his bones to splinters, and the onslaught of pain and hurt stabbing him from head to toe, Nathanael himself screaming  _Make it stop Make it stop Make it stop Make it stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop STOP AND JUST KILL ME ALREADY_ —

And his eyes shot open to the ceiling. He was gasping on his bed once more. The sheets and his clothes too cold and wet over and under. He could taste salt on his mouth—his tears, he'd come to learn—, and something unfamiliar. Puzzled yet still stricken and terrified by his dream, he dipped his left forefinger inside, the saliva part cold and lukewarm.

The moonlight had struck past his window, looking more of a weakening flashlight against his white curtain. There was enough light to see, but just to be certain, Nathanael flipped the study lamp on—conveniently right next to him on the nightstand.

He held his finger closer to the light. Bright red blood glistened against his skin. 

Had he bitten his tongue? No, it couldn't be. He would've felt it if he did. His teeth and gums were okay, too. They wouldn't bleed out for no reason.

_Then what?_

Nathanael's eyes drooped. The ceiling looked funny in his line of sight. Then for the twentieth time, his mind dropped him in the void where no butterflies could touch him, much less enter like a virus to his system.

That didn't mean he had a very sound sleep. That didn't mean he had lesser tendencies to sleep in class either, just like a few of his classmates—Mylene, Alya, Alix, Nino, and Kim, to be exact.

"Maybe we should get a sleeping quarters for these six students, wouldn't you say?" Ms. Mendeleiev suggested in that austere, condescending lilt. The kind of voice that could set anyone riled up, only held back by the fact that she is a teacher and students weren't supposed to fight them.

"We might need to have them consulted to a psychiatrist," Miss Bustier said. "They certainly don't look well enough. Some of their classmates had also put disturbing... thoughts about their cases. They want to help, however possible."

The rest of the faculty nodded, apparently choosing the one with more sense. Or maybe because Miss Bustier is just a fresh crop in the garden and favoritism had always been a universal sin like denial and lying were.

Once their opinions on the matter were taken, mostly agreeing with Miss Bustier’s suggestion, Miss Bustier moved the notion even further. "I know one who could help us sort them. Leave it to me, fellow teachers."

"Well, it's really your duty," the teacher says again, sniffing the air in disdain. "You're their homeroom teacher. They're your responsibility."

The half of the day was over when the six 9th graders made their way out of Francois-Dupont with Miss Bustier in the lead with a sunny smile. She would have attracted the gods if they still existed, if Apollo or Helios was driving the sun chariot. The students, with their heads hung a little low to protect their eyes from sunlight, felt their urges to sleep climb straight to ninety-five percent.

"Where are we going, Miss Bustier?" Mylene asked, squinting.

The teacher turned with that bright smile in tow. It hurt less than the sunlight, Nathanael figured as he gazed at her. "We'll have to pass the Notre Dame first, kids, if that's okay with you. I just want to seek a man's advice."

"It's alright, Miss," Alya assured with a vague wave of her hand. "I don't think I'm that ready for"—she yawned, shoulders slumping—"some... impromptu psychology sessions."

"Count me in on that," Nino grumbled, also yawning.

"I just want to go home," Nathanael found himself saying.

"No one goes home." Miss Bustier clapped, enthusiastic as if nothing was wrong. "Until we figure it out, okay? Just hold on."

Nathanael fixed his crumbling resolve. Nodded. Saw his agonized companions nod, and they did that without hesitation. They just wanted to be done, Nathanael knew that much, and by now they just didn't care how it ends.

"I just want it to end, you know," Kim had told them seven days ago. "My football mates kept me from jumping off the bridge after school. Never saw my mom cry so hard..."

He broke into tears. Nathanael did, too.

"So I decided to hold on," he continued, pasty-faced, eyes hollowed out thanks to pain. "But until when could I hold on, I always ask myself. Until when could I last?"

No one answered that. But they decided to hold onto something: each other, as they were all in this trouble, of course; their family; friends.

But it wasn't enough, holding on. The headaches just got worst, testing them perhaps, to see who takes that swing to death.

All of them were exhausted since day one. So in hopes of finally having answers, Nathanael and his classmates—the strange, dark eyebagged lot of them—they followed Miss Bustier to the sun and to the Notre Dame, trying to listen to whatever she said. Every word passed listless against Nathanael's ears.

They entered a white van, conveniently parked there at the school's parking lot. Miss Bustier went to the passenger's set, Kim opened the back doors for them. Inside, cool air kissed Nathanael's skin. A faint orange light spread from the little lightbulb looking down at them from the hold's ceiling.

"Get inside, kids," Miss Bustier called from the passenger's seat. Nathanael could see her back and her bright orange hair through the screened window. Once they were all in, Kim closed the doors and gave the thumbs up.

The engine prattled to life. The driver, whose cap was pulled low so a shadow enclosed the top half of his face, pulled and pushed something on the dashboard. As the van took off from parking, a vague American music played.

 _'We're on a highway to hell,'_  the speakers sang.

The light bulb blinked. Did he see a  _butterfly_  at the corner—? The cold turned harsh against his skin, prickling, and Nathanael felt that his breakfast would make a gross reappearance soon if he didn't get off of this van—

The tsunami which is his headache came in full force. The small segment of his mind that still worked had seconds to think:  _What? How—?_

Screams filled the van— _he wasn't alone_. And yet, in the midst of the rushing pain and the little defense that he had against this, Nathanael had never felt so alone in his life.

 


End file.
